Rowel Friers' endpapers and interior illustration for "The Obstinate Ghost"

I still need to get around to a full essay on the dandy 1960s ghost/folklore books by Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd. In the meantime, this post features some of the superb artwork by their illustrator, Rowel Friers (1920-1998). Shown above are Friers' endpapers illustration and his illustration for "Billy Bates's Story" from the 1968 collection The Obstinate Ghost and Other Ghostly Tales. Don't we all wish we grew up in a neighborhood with a house like that? Or lived in one now?

Friers was a cartoonist, painter, illustrator, set designer and actor. For a story on his funeral service in 1998, Neil Johnston of the Belfast Telegraph wrote:

"The church was packed with representatives from the arts, music, drama, newspapers and television. ... All of them referred to his humanity, his generosity of spirit, his charm, his talent as an artist, his work for charity, particularly Cystic Fibrosis, and the devastating way in which he used his gift for cartoons to attack pomposity, political cant, and sectarian bigotry wherever he saw it."

It seems that providing illustrations for children's books was just a minor side job for Friers, but we should be very glad it happened and that his contributions to these Palmer/Lloyd books exist.

Other endpapers illustrations

• Curious artistic endpapers from the 1912 novel "Corporal Cameron"
• Dubble Bubble Quiz tucked away inside an old schoolbook
• Birds wearing clothes to help children learn to read in 1930
• Sheep featured on endpapers of Elson Junior Literature book
• 1936's "Albanian Wonder Tales": Frontispiece and endpapers
• Cool map featured on endpapers of "At Camp Kee Tov"
• The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle
• Gorgeous endpapers in 1895's "The Young Conductor"
• "Joyce of the Secret Squadron: A Captain Midnight Adventure"
• 3 cool things: The Story of Siegfried (published 1931)
• Endpapers and title page for 1920 primer: "The Winston Readers"
• Nifty endpapers from a Nelson Doubleday Junior Deluxe Edition
• "A Child's Garden of Verses" and the work of Eulalie
• Book cover & endpapers: "Doctor Dolittle in the Moon"
• Book cover and alarming endpapers: "All About the Atom"
• Book cover: "The Vanishing Shadow"
• The joyous illustrations of Johnny Gruelle's "The Paper Dragon"
• Farewell to a book
• Book cover: "Little Pilgrim to Penn's Woods"
• Book cover: "The Mystery of the Shining Children"
• Remembering "Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful"
• Endpapers of 1915's "The Brownies and the Goblins"
• Colorful covers and endpapers of 1926's "Granny Goose"
• Carlos Mérida's delightful illustrations for "The Magic Forest"
• Wynn's dandy endpapers illustration for 1933's "Incredible Land"